In the grand scheme of things it was inevitable that planning permission would be granted one way or another. But the fact that councillors complained about the actions of the developer in going straight to appeal rather than working in partnership with an already over-stretched council planning service hardly boosts the reputation of the construction industry in the eyes of the residents.
I’m not going to lose too much sleep over this.
If you want to see details of the proposals for the buildings around Cambridge North Station, you can see their website here.
If you want to see the determination by the joint committee of councillors from Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, see the minutes of their meeting on 22 March 2023 – which also links to the drawings pack.
To see the hundreds of documents, type in the reference: 22/02771/OUT into the search box on the GCSP Portal here.
Keep an eye on the Section 106 Agreement commitments.
…only the way Cambridge City Council was outmanoeuvred over the original commitments on Cambridge Station by the same firm still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for local residents on this side of the river. But again, if it wasn’t the current firm doing it, it would be someone else because the problems, as the Grenfell Inquiry revealed, are right throughout the sector from ministers and senior policy advisers, to the financiers, to the consultants, to the supervision of construction, to the quality of construction itself.
The water issue
It hasn’t gone away.
And that the Environment Agency were still maintaining their objections (requiring the Planning Minister Lee Rowley to overrule them) speaks volumes
Above – the most recent set of documents from the planning portal. (Reference: 22/02771/OUT)
Above – former councillor Sam Davies MBE is not convinced.
The Minister was quoted as saying:
“Mr Rowley, acting on behalf of Housing Secretary Michael Gove, has now agreed it would “contribute to the continued growth of the research and development cluster” in the area and be consistent with the government’s vision for Cambridge”
Above – BBC Cambridgeshire 25 Apr 2024
The councillors would have refused the application – had they had the chance
See Fareid Atta in the Cambridge News from 22 March 2023
The sustained objection from the Environment Agency alone was enough to justify objecting to the application.
“The objection will be maintained until evidence is provided to demonstrate that an
adequate and sustainable water supply can be provided, or that site-specific and/or
off-site measures show that the risks posed by the development can be mitigated
or removed, in the context of the evidence.”
Above – Environment Agency’s summary of comments, Appendix 5 p8
Cambridge Past, Present, and Future also sustained their opposition to the application – you can read the post by their Chief Executive James Littlewood here. The north-east entrance to the city risks, as he states, becoming a ‘Great Wall of North East Cambridge’. His objections were also supported by Historic England’s objection.
“There must be a sizeable public art strategy, right?”
There is – and it’s worth looking at given it goes into seven figures. The document looks like this and is dated 15 June 2022 so you’ll have to do Ctrl+F or scroll a long way down the page of documents to find it.
Above – detail of their public art strategy front page.
Above – nearly £1million allocated for major commissions – including a major landmark sculpture.
This reflects the trend of the past however-many-decades where architects build a bland-looking identikit box (or series of boxes) that could be anywhere, and have a separate ‘public art’ commission that’s a piece of abstract sculpture requiring a post-graduate degree in modern art to be able to make any sense of it. (The wonderful thing about art is that it’s controversial by its nature!)
I keep coming back to the design of Graz City Hall in Austria (which I visited back in Summer 2006) as an example of the artwork being part of the building.
Above – the annotated version I submitted to Cambridge City Council some time ago when they were discussing their civic square plans for Cambridge Market Square
Bidwells doing cracking business
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, the firm is prominent at the big property conference in Leeds that costs over £1,000 to participate.
Reflecting on a couple of posts in response to my blogpost here, the sentiment goes beyond these two comments.
Above – ‘We know it happens but to see it happening / in writing…’ It’s a bit like with the MPs’ expenses scandal
In their most recent suite of corporate news items, Bidwells has been involved in:
- Cambridge North
- The redevelopment of the Hauxton Sewage Works (long overdue in the grand scheme of things)
- The conversion of The Grafton Centre from shopping centre to sci-tech centre
…amongst other major projects.
The firm has a very long family history in Cambridge, – some of the family’s ancestors were involved in temperance campaigning and votes-for-women campaigns. It would be nice for the firm to contribute far more towards alleviating the problems of extreme inequalities in and around our city – especially given the huge sums they make from their commercial activities. (Again, if it wasn’t them making the profits, it would be someone else. The problem is structural. And Political too).
Expect some of these issues to come up in general election debates. Just don’t expect the next government to deal with them. The lobbying power and influence the sector has over Westminster & Whitehall is ***huge.*** As I saw for myself during my own civil service days. It remains to be seen whether the next government has the courage to strengthen the civil service in-house capacity (one that was utterly exposed during the Grenfell Inquiry hearings) or whether it will remain dependent on private sector firms for secondees and consultants/outsourced provision.
Food for thought?
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The Cambridge Town Owl 